Intellectual Virtues

Abstract Some of the most interesting work in late-20th-century epistemology reintroduced, from ancient and medieval philosophy, the idea of an intellectual virtue and the related idea of proper epistemic function. But most of that work employed such concepts, with questionable success, in the interest of defining justification, warrant, or knowledge; and little or none of it offered detailed analyses of intellectual virtues. This book proposes and illustrates a different purpose for epistemology, one that we see in early modern thinkers, especially John Locke — namely that of guiding, refining, and informing the epistemic practices of the intellectual segment of the population. One important aspect of the…